Week in review – science edition

I will be at this meeting: Next week, 300+ scientists will exchange ideas on #weather and #climate variations on subseasonal to decadal timescales. Watch the meeting live: [link]…

“Potential surface hydrologic responses to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations and land use and land cover changes” [link]… Illustrates that land use/land management is a 1st order human climate forcing.

On the Relative Roles of the Atmosphere and Ocean in the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability [link]

Researchers conduct a comprehensive review of summer weather stalling, focusing on the influence of #Arctic amplification and how it could interact with other factors influenced by #climatechange. [link]…

How net nitrous oxide & methane emissions from irrigated rice farms across the world can be reduced by up to 60% by shallow intermittent flooding alone.[link]

The strange science of melting ice sheets: three things you didn’t know [link]

No impact of anthropogenic aerosols on early 21st century global temperature trends in a large initial‐condition ensemble [link]

Lovejoy: The spectra, intermittency and extremes of weather, macroweather and climate, [link]

Conditions associated with rain field size for tropical cyclones landfalling over the Eastern United States [link]

An @MIT researcher realized air pollution was impacting the output of solar panels in urban environments. Now, that research shows the effects of haze can mean the difference between success and loss. [link]

Re‐Framing Future Risks of Extreme Heat in the United States (open access) [link]

“The analysis indicates possible links in the prediction skill of AO with the SST forcing from the tropics”-Causes of skill in seasonal predictions of the Arctic Oscillation- [link]

Researchers have developed a complementary approach to creating ensembles for seasonal-average temp and precip over land that can also be used to study internal variability – termed Observational Large Ensembles.[link]

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Social science and policy

Walter Russell Mead: The conventional green movement is stuck; to succeed, it needs to ditch the hair shirt and go high tech.[link]

Ernest Moniz notes that the lack of seasonal energy storage will be a real challenge for California’s 100% clean electricity bill, an issue nearly all the researchers I speak with stress (And it’s not a problem lithium-ion seems well suited for.) [link]

Peter Gleick: I’m deeply honored to be the recipient of the 2018 Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization. His early efforts to communicate the wonders of science to the public and policy makers were inspirational to a whole generation. [link]

Is there a better, more “scientific” way of doing climate history, one that takes the messy subjectivity out of historical scholarship? [link] …

They look at the climate history and tell us of the many things they don’t yet understand, but then they tell us they have modeled this stuff they don’t understand and the models tell what will happen next. The models cannot reproduce what already happened.

Willis:
You know full well that the settled bit is that CO2 is a GHG, we have increased it from 280 to 400+ ppm since mankind became industrialised and it is causing the GMT to rise.
The amount it will rise is not settled.
Computer modelling of climate is not settled.
The IPCC states 1.5 to 4.5C per x2 CO2 … that’s the bit that’s settled.

Speaking of models… congrats to Dr. Curry and CFAN for correctly predicting Florence. As someone whose city was partially evacuated based on the awful GFS models, it was good to see Weather.com eventually getting around to showing the correct track crediting the European models “as adjusted by CFAN” in their blog. I assume that’s the same CFAN.

how deep learning can be used in a climate model to parameterize convection.

Oh great. Just what climate science needs now: another algorithm to estimate an unmeasurable (or at best poorly measured) fundamental quantity, where the effects of particular data values can’t be traced through the calculations.

“TRIPODS+Climate will create new methodologies in machine learning and network estimation that reveal the structure of the Earth’s climate system and its regional hydroclimatic impacts. Machine learning, where statistical algorithms use large datasets to detect patterns and make predictions, can be used to find teleconnections previously hidden from human observation. Network estimation methods can mathematically conceptualize global climate as an interconnected structure of nodes, so that scientists can better quantify and understand complex influences across geography and time.

“Data science techniques are especially useful for sifting through massive troves of data to discover unexpected relationships between events,” said Wright, professor of computer sciences at UW-Madison. “We have seen examples of this phenomenon in the relationships between genetics, environment and disease. Climate science is an area in which very large collections of data are ready and waiting to be analyzed.”

These tools will then be used to build new computational climate models and create new platforms for climate diagnostics and prognostics, improving seasonal and subseasonal forecasts. More accurate predictions will help scientists and policymakers understand and prepare for climate change, extreme weather events, and water allocation under conditions of high or low precipitation.

…

The TRIPODS+X research team will jointly pursue the creation of new methodologies in machine learning and network estimation to develop a better understanding of the Earth’s climate system and its regional hydrologic impacts. “Classical tools fail to account for complex dependence structures and higher-order interactions among features, and for nonstationary dynamics,” said UCI co-investigator Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, Distinguished Professor of civil & environmental engineering. “Because of this, important aspects of climate systems are poorly understood, limiting our ability to improve the accuracy of regional forecasts. We believe that data science has a lot to offer in exploring climate data and model outputs to understand and attribute climate modes of variability and change to develop better predictive models.”

…
University of Minnesota to develop machine learning techniques for monitoring global change
September 11, 2018https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/university-minnesota-develop-machine-learning-techniques-monitoring-global-change
“The College of Science and Engineering (CSE); College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS); and Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) will lead a team to advance the state-of-the-art in machine learning for analyzing data from earth-observing satellites and generating actionable information on a global scale.
The project’s main focus will be to advance the state-of-art in machine learning techniques for analyzing spatial and temporal agricultural cropping data and urban landscapes. Such analyses can produce critical information needed for developing sustainable practices for increasing crop yields and for managing water run-off flows and quality. In particular, the team aims to develop and advance deep learning (a subfield of machine learning) techniques, to monitor these global changes by analyzing remote-sensing data obtained from satellites.”

jacksmith4tx: These tools will then be used to build new computational climate models and create new platforms for climate diagnostics and prognostics, improving seasonal and subseasonal forecasts. More accurate predictions will help scientists and policymakers understand and prepare for climate change, extreme weather events, and water allocation under conditions of high or low precipitation.

One lives in hope. I expect good results, validated and calibrated against decades of observations, decades hence.

but using multilayer neural networks (that is, neural networks with multiple hidden layers) to parameterize convection? That’s just another way of chasing your tail.

So Ioannidis made an apt comparison between the science on “smoking causing cancer” and the science on “humans causing climate change.” He made this comparison because he recognizes that scientific hypotheses become more reliable (and more likely to be true) as more and more research groups test the hypothesis using different lines of evidence, methodologies, etc., and keep finding that the hypothesis passes the tests. Ioannidis accepts this point, even though he thinks many published research findings are false. See, for example:

“Why most published research findings are false”
“Most published research findings are false—But a little replication goes a long way”
“Why most published research findings are false: Problems in the analysis”
“Why most published research findings are false: Author’s reply to Goodman and Greenland”

Thus Ioannidis’ points would do nothing to undermine well-evidenced points in nutrition science, such as the contribution of saturated fat to heart disease risk.

Of course, many people conveniently leave these points about, when they misuse Ioannidis work to cast doubt on whatever branch of science they don’t want to accept. I wonder where that has happened before…

He is not a climate scientist and has not studied the issue. His opinion is second-hand. My opinion was the same as his, before I studied the issue. One cannot decide if the consensus is right without studying the evidence. And Ioannidis research is not about the solidity of consensus, but the irreproducibility of research.

Model based research is absolutely reproducible. With the same model under the same conditions you get the same results. Whether they are related to anything real is a different matter.

Yet people on this website happily abuse his work to manufacture false doubt on climate science. How telling.

Re: “My opinion was the same as his, before I studied the issue.

Yes, I’m familiar with how you’ve distorted the scientific literature during your “studie[s]”. We’ve had multiple discussions on this before, and there’s a reason why the more informed scientists accept the evidence-based consensus in their peer-reviewed papers, while you reject it in the blogposts you make here.

One cannot decide if the consensus is right without studying the evidence.”

False, as shown by the behavior you (and virtually everyone else) display everyday.

For example, you likely regularly rely on the consensus on medical experts when it comes to medicine, without reviewing the evidence. Unless, of course, you’ve gone to medical school and read up on the literature regarding the various questions doctors ask you, the medical tests they perform, etc. Similarly so for you relying on the expertise of food scientists when it comes to the processed food you eat, aeronautical scientists when it comes to the planes you fly in, etc.

You simply don’t have the time+expertise needed to review the scientific evidence on the numerous topics in which you rely on (and thereby implicitly accept) the evidence-based scientific consensus. If you think otherwise, then there’s going to be a lot of peer-reviewed research you’re going to need to read before you eat processed food, wear clothing, fly in planes, etc.

A helpful review on these points from philosophy:

“Philosophers studying argumentation and critical thinking inherit a tradition of treating the appeal to authority as fallacious […] (286)
It is now widely recognized, however, that in its strict form, this position is untenable […] Quite the contrary, we are dependent on others for much of what we know, since we don’t have the time to investigate everything for ourselves, and many things are accessible only through the testimony of others (see also Hardwig 1985). As documented by Walton (1997), philosophers have therefore shifted the appeal to authority out of the category of fallacy and accepted it instead as a potentially sound form of argument (see also Goldman 2001; Tindale 1999) (287).
[…]
When we recognize that experts know things that deserve to be heard, that appeals to expert authority aren’t fallacies, and that contributions from experts have a place in the public sphere, we have to start asking the hard questions about how these projected interactions between experts and nonexperts are going to take place (288).”https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10503-011-9219-6

Re: “And Ioannidis research is not about the solidity of consensus, but the irreproducibility of research.”

Which would be largely irrelevant to much of climate science, since many of the central points have been reproduced over and over (ex: climate sensitivity estimates, tropospheric warming, stratospheric cooling that’s greater in the upper stratosophere and becomes more muted in the lower stratosphere in response to the Montreal Protocol mitigating CFC emissions).

Let me know when you address some of the reviews on these subjects. For instance:

“Climate sensitivity in the geologic past”
“Palaeoclimate constraints on the impact of 2 °C anthropogenic warming and beyond”

Are you now pretending you didn’t write that? Maybe moving the goal-posts around to avoid previous points you made? Or do you not know what “Nullius in verba” means? [Hint: it has something to do with who you do and don’t trust, especially with respect to authorities]

Now, you admitted that on many science matters, you trust the experts without having studied the evidence:

“Yet people on this website happily abuse his work to manufacture false doubt on climate science.”

Ioannidis has demonstrated science has a credibility problem. You argue climate science should be excluded.

You need to distinguish between first-hand opinion and second-hand opinion. In the first case it is based on the examination of the evidence, while in the second case it is based on being convinced by arguments presented by others.

When I have not studied the evidence, I trust the experts, but I will ask for a second opinion or study the evidence if it matters to me.

“there’s a reason why the more informed scientists accept the evidence-based consensus in their peer-reviewed papers”

There is more than one reason. They actually damage their careers if they don’t. When you impose such a punishing system you don’t know what scientists think because they won’t tell. The consensus is weaker than it seems.

“When we recognize that experts know things that deserve to be heard, that appeals to expert authority aren’t fallacies”

I hope you are not related to science in any way. Does the motto “Nullius in verba” sound familiar to you?

Nope, he has not. Next time, actually look at what Ioannidis said, not what you wish he said. He makes it very clear that his arguments don’t apply to well-established points that have been replicated by different research teams, using numerous lines of evidence. These points include humans causing climate change, and smoking killing people. I already showed where he said that, so there’s no excuse for you not being aware of it.

Re: “They actually damage their careers if they don’t.”

Don’t resort to baseless, denialist reasoning:

“Conspiracy Theories and Selective Distrust of Scientific Authority
[…]Deniers argue that because scientists receive grant money, fame, and prestige as a result of their research, it is in their best interest to maintain the status quo [15]. This type of thinking is convenient for deniers as it allows them to choose which authorities to believe and which ones to dismiss as part of a grand conspiracy. In addition to being selective, their logic is also internally inconsistent.”http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040256

Anyway, last I checked, Curry, Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, etc. all continued to received government funding, be employed in science, etc. long after they made debunked claims in climate science. Doesn’t sound like a damaged career to me.

Re: “When I have not studied the evidence, I trust the experts […]”
“Does the motto “Nullius in verba” sound familiar to you?”

It’s funny how you use Latin to say not to take anyone’s word for it… after admitting you trust the word of experts.

I have read Ioannidis. His focus is biomedicine research and psychology, where he and others find a lot of troubled articles. The problem is clearly general because it affects the way science regulates itself. And it affects every discipline because all have the same [lack of proper] controls. Climate science also is filled with wrong, irreproducible, or inane papers.

“Don’t resort to baseless, denialist reasoning”

It is clear your lack of knowledge about the things you argue.
Prof. Curry already exposed here in her blog her reasons to abandon her academic career. And you have also Lennart Bengtsson, former director of the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology, winner of the Descartes Prize and a WMO prize for groundbreaking research put it succinctly after agreeing to participate in a group headed by Nigel Lawson, member of the House of Lords and former Chancellor of the Exchequer:

“I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF [The Global Warming Policy Foundation]. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.”

Then you have Murray Salby, who was fired while on a conference in Paris without a return ticket to Australia. Or Peter Ridd, recently fired by James Cook University for questioning alarming research on the Great Barrier reef.

You can ignore all these cases and many others because they don’t affect you, but skeptic climate scientists are very aware that publicly expressing doubts is bad for their careers and their relationship with colleagues.

It is another reason to mistrust the consensus. In science you only need to suppress the opposition if you are wrong and they are right.

“It’s funny how you use Latin to say not to take anyone’s word for it… after admitting you trust the word of experts.”

In science no argument can be settled on the authority of anybody. You seem to have trouble understanding simple things.

Javier, the excellent Bob Carter was also run out of James Cook, a twopenny-ha’penny provincial university, as was the also excellent Mervyn Bendle in a different field. JCU typifies the decline in Australia’s university system.

The experience of Bengtsson and others doesn’t surprise me in the least. This kind of reaction by warmists towards him is entirely consistent with their compatriots’ behavior in other facets of the political dialogue. Destroy opposing ideas and even people, in any manner available, is their mantra. If you have to destroy careers and reputations, then it’s just collateral damage that’s justified because, after all, they need to save the world.

Generations from now historians will write about this sick period, much as they write about the Salem Witch Hunts and McCarthy. The sociopathologies are the same.

Bengtsson touched the third rail by trying to join a political advocacy group seen as pro-fossil. This is not viewed well among scientists and he learned that. If he kept to scientific criticisms it would be fine but palling around with people like that presented him with a choice.

Why am I not surprised that you would justify the inexcusable? The prosecution of people because of their ideas or beliefs.

So it is OK for a climate scientist to be an advocate of anthropogenic climate change alarmism and try to change our energy policies, but if you do the opposite you are a pariah deserving all sort of personal attacks and professional damage.

You are not even aware of the profound bias and hypocrisy you display.

What you don’t understand, Jim, is that defense of the freedom of others is self-defense. Or as attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

It is a pity that we keep forgetting what the great men of the past learned.

The problem is clearly general because it affects the way science regulates itself. And it affects every discipline because all have the same [lack of proper] controls. Climate science also is filled with wrong, irreproducible, or inane papers.

Re: “I have read Ioannidis. His focus is biomedicine research and psychology, where he and others find a lot of troubled articles. The problem is clearly general because it affects the way science regulates itself. And it affects every discipline because all have the same [lack of proper] controls. Climate science also is filled with wrong, irreproducible, or inane papers.”

Once again, nope. The problem is clearly not general, as Ioannidis himself notes with his examples of smoking killing people and humans causing climate change. You are simply abusing Ioannidis’ position applying to climate science, and trying to pass of your own position as if that’s an accurate representation of Ioannidis’ point.

Re: “Then you have Murray Salby, who was fired while on a conference in Paris without a return ticket to Australia”

Salby was fired for not meeting his teaching obligations, misusing research funds, etc. To claim he was fired for his contrarianism is ridiculous. When you use poor examples like that, it makes you points look rather bad.

And your citation of individual scientists whining, is a uninteresting as creationists claiming their career was destroyed for not accepting evolutionary biology, or AIDS denialists (like Peter Duesberg) claiming their career was destroyed because of the evil HIV/AIDS establishment, or Andrew Wakefield claiming there’s a conspiracy against him, or… It’s simply precious when debunked scientists pretend that there’s a conspiracy against them from those who accept the evidence-based scientific consensus. Or maybe you would buy the nonsense in Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”? I’m really not interested in the crackpot stories debunked scientists make up for why their colleagues don’t take their refuted points seriously.

Re: “In science no argument can be settled on the authority of anybody”

This issue was already dumbed down to you, to the point that you admitted that on many science matters, you trust the experts without having studied the evidence:

“as Ioannidis himself notes with his examples of smoking killing people and humans causing climate change.”

Ioannidis opinion is noted, but he is a professor of medicine and statistics, not a climate scientist, so he doesn’t have enough expertise to judge the field.

“to the point that you admitted that on many science matters, you trust the experts without having studied the evidence”

Your debating skills are terrible. Who I trust or not is absolutely irrelevant to the question.

No scientific argument can be settled on account of authority. Period. Is that clear enough to you? Did you ever take a course on the scientific method? Did you ever pass it? Why are giving your opinion on things you know so little?

Javier, it happens both ways. I am sure Mann and Hansen have received their fair share of unfriendly comments too, but they stand by their advocacy anyway. In Bengtsson’s case it was people he may have respected which made him think twice about entering the world of advocacy via GWPF. If he didn’t respect them, he would have ignored them like Mann and Hansen probably do.

“I am sure Mann and Hansen have received their fair share of unfriendly comments too.”

Don’t try to hide behind others, Jim. It is you who is justifying here the mobbing and harassment of people because they chose to defend their beliefs anyway they see fit within the law.

You only have to answer about your own behavior and opinions. Same as me. I might not like advocacy by scientists as I don’t think it is their role, but it is clearly within their rights to do it, and they should not suffer any type of harassment or prosecution for doing it.

It seems awfully unfair to allow advocacy to one side and not to the other. But that is what is happening, and you support it.

Javier, advocacy is fine, but you have to take what comes with it. Bengtsson was obviously rubbing some of his colleagues the wrong way, which is understandably a difficult situation workwise and GWPF was not worth that. He weighed things up. His colleagues versus advocacy.

Ioannides apparently believes in the manufactured consensus that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Manufactured because – well – it was never seriously in doubt. Hard to build a case that Ioannidis buys into the delusions of an Atomski that the paleo narratives he google lists are either definitive or an analogue of modern conditions. He then goes off on the same irrelevant riffs on AIDS, smoking, vaccines or evolution. He has a troglodyte stereotype in mind rather than informed discourse on Earth system science. He is a complete waste of time.

Interesting that smoking is a comparison since Heartland has had their hands in muddying he waters for both smoking and climate science for some time. There was even some crossover with a “professional” or two from Heartland between the two topics.

Goodwin is discussing what Aristotle referred to as rhetoric, what we are talking about here is logic and dialectics. I fear you are confused (and you will have gathered that none of this is particularly new).

Re: “Goodwin is discussing what Aristotle referred to as rhetoric, what we are talking about here is logic and dialectics. I fear you are confused (and you will have gathered that none of this is particularly new).”

Fair warning:
I actually read what I cite, to make sure I understand it. So next time, don’t arrogantly make false claims about something that I have read+understood, and which you have neither read nor understood.

Apparently there is a gap between reading and understanding. I’m surprised you don’t understand the difference between referring to ‘the logic of the appeal to authority …’ and the use of the appeal to authority as a form of logic, dialectic or rhetoric.

Re: “Apparently there is a gap between reading and understanding. I’m surprised you don’t understand the difference between referring to ‘the logic of the appeal to authority …’ and the use of the appeal to authority as a form of logic, dialectic or rhetoric.”

I see what the problem is. As I suspected you don’t understand the distinct forms of argument that are being discussed.

The form of argument Godwin is referring to, argument from authority, is called by Aristotle “rhetoric”. It is a technique used to persuade in the course of “general civic deliberations” (to quote Godwin).

But it isn’t a form of argument that should be used in science, as is being discussed by others here, and nor has there been a retreat from that view in the empirical science.

This distinction has a long history as I noted, something perhaps to brush up on.

Re: “I see what the problem is. As I suspected you don’t understand the distinct forms of argument that are being discussed.”

I’m really not interested in what evidence-free claims you decide to invent about a paper you never read. An argument is an argument. Period. The context in which one uses the argument is irrelevant to the arguments logical structure, fallaciousness or non-fallaciousness, etc. I suggest you learn that.

I’m please to see you are now beginning to understand the idea of the context in which an argument (inference) occurs, even if you deny its importance. When you started your comments here you had no understanding of that concept. We are making progress.

Let’s now turn to your assertion “The context in which one uses the argument is irrelevant to the arguments logical structure, fallaciousness or non-fallaciousness, etc.” It might surprise you to learn that precisely because in real life the context is central to these matters, formal logicians have developed a raft of different logics each with their different logical structures and truth functions. How otherwise would they model things like the different standards of proof used in the legal profession?

Along with Aristotle and the classical scholars on argumentation, you could perhaps add a study of formal logic to your reading list.

Re: “Let’s now turn to your assertion “The context in which one uses the argument is irrelevant to the arguments logical structure, fallaciousness or non-fallaciousness, etc.” It might surprise you to learn that precisely because in real life the context is central to these matters, formal logicians have developed a raft of different logics each with their different logical structures and truth functions. How otherwise would they model things like the different standards of proof used in the legal profession?”

Nice try, but no. Wishful thinking, affirming the consequent, etc. don’t stop being fallacious just because of a change in context. Please take a refresher course in basic logic and critical thinking. And actually read the source I cited to you, since you still don’t seem to grasp it.

Looks to me like another slippery attempt to promote “smoking is bad” = “CO2 is bad”. Filling your lungs with smoke is clearly a bad idea. On the other hand, CO2 is vital to the survival of life on the planet.
Seems to me your objective is to steamroll over any opposition that dares state the painfully obvious: we simply do not know the distant impact of man dumping CO2 into the air. However we do know our energy resources need to be wisely used. Concentrate on the later and the former will take care of itself.

I am referring to you. To the extent Ioannidis equates climate science = science & smoking, then ditto as well. The comparison does not “hold-water” at a basic level because of the vast imponderables surrounding our climate. Stated somewhat differently, the climate is astoundingly complex. Lungs, not nearly as much. The later can be evaluated using science while the climate is beyond our current abilities to project into the future.

Re: “I am referring to you. To the extent Ioannidis equates climate science = science & smoking, then ditto as well. The comparison does not “hold-water” at a basic level because of the vast imponderables surrounding our climate. Stated somewhat differently, the climate is astoundingly complex. Lungs, not nearly as much. The later can be evaluated using science while the climate is beyond our current abilities to project into the future.”

And you’re illustrating my point, by using the same faulty logic the tobacco industry used to cast doubt on smoking causing cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), etc.

Lung cancer is also complex and not fully understood. That doesn’t change the fact that we know smoking and second-hand smoking causes most cases on lung cancer in the US; hence the evidence-based scientific consensus on that. The lesson here is that complexity does not prevent on from know the primary cause of something, nor does one need full knowledge of everything in order to identify a primary cause.

A parallel point applies to climate change: pointing out that stuff is “complex” or “not fully understood”, does not rebut the evidence-based scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. It does not change the fact that scientists know that humans caused most of the recent global warming.

And to re-iterate, the tobacco industry used the same faulty logic you’re using regarding matters being so “complex” as to not be known:

“Corporations use a range of strategies to dispute their role in causing public health harms and to limit the scope of effective public health interventions. […] these industries argue that aetiology is complex, so individual products cannot be blamed […].
[…]Arguments about the complex, multifactorial aetiology of [coronary heart disease] and cancer have long been used by the tobacco industry to dispute the epidemiological and other evidence. This approach to the evidence has also been documented in other industries, and the use of double standards in demands for evidence is a characteristic of many other fields. For example, car manufacturers fought the mandatory introduction of airbags and seatbelts in the 1960s as ineffective, and the alcohol industry and motoring organisations did the same with the introduction of the breathalyser to tackle drink driving in the 1960s. Demands for perfect evidence, while misrepresenting the existing evidence, can also be observed in climate change denialism.”http://jech.bmj.com/content/71/11/1078

I wonder if Richard Lindzen would be pleased?:

“The truth about global warming
[…]Lindzen clearly relishes the role of naysayer. He’ll even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking. […] he punctuates his measured cadences with thoughtful drags on a cigarette.”http://www.newsweek.com/truth-about-global-warming-154937

Complex doesn’t begin to define the the distance between CO2 is a greenhouse gas and the Earth system is dynamically complex – in the scientific sense. At the level of paradigm – quite a lot of climate science misses the point.

The strange science of melting ice sheets: three things you didn’t know [link]

Now, the next thing you didn’t know and that the “so called experts” still do not know. Warm times with warm thawed Polar Oceans provides evaporation and snowfall to rebuild Polar Ice on Land. Ice cores shows that most of the ice on Greenland and Antarctica accumulated in the warmest times. Warm times when it snows more are normal, natural and necessary. The ice sheets are still losing ice at the edges, they always do that, but now they are gaining ice on top of the ice sheets. That only happens in the warm times. Ice core data shows that not much ice accumulates in the cold times. Cold times are when ice depletes and that causes warming later. Warm times are when ice volume increases, extent and cooling happen later. This is how natural ice cycles work.

John Ioannidis, the scientific equivalent of the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, aims his bazooka at nutrition science. (JAMA August 23, 2018) By @AlexBerezow [link]

Before the food fads began in earnest in the 1950’s:

“As the United States entered World War II, the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) was established within the National Academy of Sciences initially to advise the Army and later other government agencies on problems relating to food and the nutritional status of the U.S. population.”

The outcome was the 33% of fruits and vegetables, 33% fats and protein, and 33% of starches forming the original Recommended Daily Allowances.

More recently, and with carry over into today’s recommendations, people unhappy with such recommendations further subdivided fats, protein and some starches into the now popular 5 food groups, advocates primarily not willing to have dairy commingled with fats and proteins.

Nevertheless, the 3 equal food groups recommended almost 90 years ago still stand, much to the consternation of the PETA and VEGAN diet crowd.

“ESA’s Aeolus mission scientist, Anne Grete Straume, said, “These first wind data shown in the plot made by ECMWF are from one orbit. In the profile we can see large-scale easterly and westerly winds between Earth’s surface and the lower stratosphere, including jet streams.
…
In particular, you can see strong winds, called the Stratospheric Polar Vortex, around the South Pole. These winds play an important role in the depletion of the ozone layer over the South Pole at this time of the year.
…
Aeolus satellite is named after the Greek mythological namesake character who was the guardian of the winds. Aeolus is the fifth in the series of ESA’s Earth explorers.

Aeolus has redefined wind measurement and monitoring. It is a part of the Copernicus project to track environmental damage and assist disaster relief and rehabilitation efforts.

Aeolus is equipped with a Doppler wind LiDAR to accurately measure global wind patterns from space.”

Another area that is poorly understood are SSW (sudden stratospheric warming) events and how they disrupt the atmosphere.

Sudden events do not disrupt the atmosphere, sudden events are part of natural atmospheric cycles. Change is natural, some natural change is slow and some is fast. These natural events are part of what happens, and not disruptions. When a jet stream changes its path, it causes sudden changes where it was and also where it moved to, not disruptions, but natural differences. You make natural events sound bad with the words you use. Warm periods and cold periods are natural, normal and necessary, not good or bad. People move when climate changes or people adapt. Fossil fuel has made the adapting to change much easier. People who switch to wind and solar are going to have a much harder time with future adaptation.

So if the Chinese genuinely want to help the Pakistanis with their Belt and Road Initiative, they would prioritise irrigation and flood control over transport facilities. Sounds sensible to me. When I was living around 8,000 feet in Dalhousie in the Indian Himalayas, I could see the floods covering the Punjab many miles away. I later worked with Punjabi immigrants in Birmingham (UK), I found that they had no concept of maintenance because they built mud houses which tended to wash away every couple of years or so. And no concept of gardens.

I suggest you should evaluate the basis of anyone’s conclusion to determine if it makes sense.
What is the real evidence that agw will result in a worsening climate overall? Can climate scientist tell us with a high degree of reliability what areas of the globe will suffer a worse climate 50 years from now?
I conclude that the answer to that question is no. Investing large amounts of money in CO2 mitigation takes limited resources away from investing in things like improving infrastructure.

Agreed, I’ve argued for many years that whether or not CAGW is happening and will be net harmful, our best response is to strengthen our economies and societies to deal with whatever (always unknown) future befalls.

CO2 makes green stuff grow. CO2 makes green stuff grow better while using water more efficiently.
That makes any CO2 mitigation harmful.
No evidence has ever been provided that CO2 has caused any warming. All warming so far is inside the bounds of past warming.
Explain what caused past warming that suddenly stopped such that now we need CO2 to explain what always before happened naturally.

Reducing CO2 is criminal, it is stealing fertilizer that should be used to grow our trees and other wild and cultivated green stuff.

Climate alarmists continue to claim that climate change is dangerous. They fail to distinguish between global cooling, which is dangerous, and global warming which in fact would be beneficial not dangerous.

Climate science is complex and the uncertainties are huge. But conducting a rational and relevant debate about the science is near impossible. It’s more a debate about ideology than science. And it is irrelevant for policy anyway, because policy needs to be justified on the basis of the impacts of global warming and the costs and benefits of the mitigation policies. The discussion needs to be about the impacts, not the science. We need to focus on one key message: global warming, if it does occur, would be beneficial, not harmful and certainly not dangerous. Below are some simple, clear points to make:

1. Complex life began about 650-600 Ma ago

2. The Cambrian explosion (of complex life) occurred as the planet warmed from snowball earth to the Cambrian hothouse

3. Over the past 542 Ma, the average temperature of Earth averaged about 7°C warmer than now. It ranged from about 3°C cooler to about 13°C warmer than now (average of million plus year periods).

4. The fossil record shows life thrived when the planet was warmer than now and struggled when colder

5. The optimum temperature for life on Earth is during the so called ‘Greenhouse’ temperatures, which is centred on about 5°C warmer than now (see Scotese (2016) Figure 15:

6. Earth is currently in about the severest icehouse conditions since complex life began

7. The last time Earth was nearly this cold was about 300 Ma ago. That icehouse phase lasted about 70 Ma.

8. We are currently about 10 Ma into the current icehouse phase, and trending cooler, including over the last 8,000 years.

9. There is negligible likelihood of escaping from the current icehouse conditions in less than tens of millions of years – so the glacial interglacial cycles we are currently experiencing will continue.

10. When the planet escaped from the Permian icehouse it took 20 Ma to warm to optimum conditions, and another 20 Ma to reach the peak of the Triassic hothouse. So, there is near zero likelihood of reaching dangerous temperatures in less than tens of millions of years)

To make clear what an unusual situation the planet is currently in, see IPCC AR4, WG1, Chapter 6, Figure 6.1. It shows the planet is currently in the rare situation of having polar ice caps. There have been no ice caps at either pole for about 75% of the past 542 Ma.

Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) is currently 15°C. Average temperature in the tropics is about 26°C, about -20°C at the North Pole, and about -55°C at the South Pole (Figure 2). Humans operate at all temperatures from -50° to +50°C, and life lives at all latitudes.

As the planet warms atmospheric water vapour and CO2 concentrations increase. This improves insulation. As a result, most of the warming occurs as increases in minimums, not maximums – i.e. warmer nights, warmer winters and warming increasing towards the poles but little warming in the tropics.

From Scotese (2016), a 3C GMST increase would be only about 1.3C at the equator. That is similar to changes that occur over a few years. These changes are not even noticed by inhabitants.

Average temperatures at the equator during the Cretaceous Period (145–66 Ma ago), were about 2°C warmer than now. The average temperature at the North Pole was about +10°C and the South Pole about 0°C (Figure 11). All these temperatures are far better than current for both humans and most life, and would increase global agricultural production.

Palm trees and crocodiles lived in the Arctic Circle.

Message 1: life thrives when the planet is warmer and struggles when colder than now.

Message 2: any global warming we can get this century would be beneficial, not dangerous.

Re: “4. The fossil record shows life thrived when the planet was warmer than now and struggled when colder”

Increased atmospheric CO2 results in both warming and ocean acidification (due to ocean uptake of some of the excess CO2 from the atmosphere). Both of these factors likely contributed to the Permian extinction. See:

“Initial pulse of Siberian Traps sills as the trigger of the end-Permian mass extinction”
“Climatic and biotic upheavals following the end-Permian mass extinction”
“Ocean acidification and the Permo-Triassic mass extinction”
“End-Permian mass extinction in the oceans: An ancient analog for the twenty-first century?”
“High-precision geochronology confirms voluminous magmatism before, during, and after Earth’s most severe extinction”
“Mass extinction events and the plant fossil record”, table 2 on page 549

his has interesting implications for how CO2-induced, anthropogenic climate change contributed to the current man-made mass extinction. For further context, see:

You should know this, if you actually read the sources you cite. For instance, you cite “Source: Scotese (2016)”. I’m familiar with much of Scotese’s work, so I know that Scotese (your source) agrees with what I said above. This is the article from Scotese that you’re citing to make your politically-motivated points:

If you’re citing it, then you should have read it, and thus know that it says things like:

“But Nature may not have its way. Things have changed. We have changed things. The addition of CO2 to the atmosphere during the last 200 years of human industry has amplified this natural warming trend and the average global temperature has risen rapidly. […] Since 1880, [the average global temperature] has increased another .6˚ degrees to 14.4˚C (as of 2015). This rate of warming is ~50 times faster than the rate of warming during the previous 21,000 years”

“Extreme global warming was responsible for the greatest mass extinction of all time. 99.99% of all animal life was wiped out. We are fortunate that the mammal-like reptiles, our evolutionary ancestors made it through that climatic catastrophe!”

“These extremely warm polar temperatures were approached only a few times in Earth history, during the great Permo-Triassic extinction and during the warmest hothouse worlds (Cambro-Ordovician, Middle Devonian, Triassic, late Cretaceous, PETM, and middle Eocene)”

“The absorption of CO2 by the oceans resulted in the acidification of ocean waters and caused the widespread extinction of certain marine plankton […]. The amount of carbon injected into the atmosphere during the PETM (~4.5 trillion tons) is thought to be about equal to the amount of carbon (CO2 & CH4) that humans will release into the atmosphere during the next several centuries, as all fossil fuel reserves are inexorably consumed […].”

So your own source admits to anthropogenic global warming, and admits to warming-induced mass extinction. Your source also admits to ocean-acidification-induced extinctions, and compares that to ocean acidification in response to anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2.

You conveniently left these points out, making it easier for you to claim that warming would not be dangerous. Why did you do that?

My comment is not about CO2 or causes of global warming. It is about the impacts of global warming. Do you have valid evidence that the impacts of global warming from 15 C to say 18 C GMST would do more harm than good overall? If so, please provide the evidence.

Secondly, yes, Scotese accepts the consensus position on CO2 causing global warming. However, it is not his area of research; he relies on others.

Re: “My comment is not about CO2 or causes of global warming. It is about the impacts of global warming.”

You’re dodging what you own source said, including your source claims about the impacts of global warming and increased atmospheric CO2. Once again:

Your own source admits to anthropogenic global warming, and admits to warming-induced mass extinction. Your source also admits to ocean-acidification-induced extinctions, and compares that to ocean acidification in response to anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2.

You conveniently left these points out, making it easier for you to claim that warming would not be dangerous. Why did you do that?

“The seawater Li isotope excursion started ≥300 Ky before and persisted up to the main extinction event, which is consistent with the eruption time of the Siberian Traps. The eruption of the Siberian Traps exposed an enormous amount of fresh basalt and triggered CO2 release, rapid global warming, and acid rains, which in turn led to a rapid enhancement of continental weathering. The enhanced continental weathering delivered excessive nutrients to the oceans that could lead to marine eutrophication, anoxia, acidification, and ecological perturbation, ultimately resulting in the end-Permian mass extinction.” http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/03/20/1711862115

Conditions were massively different at the end of the Permian than today. But the warmth of the Permian resulted in a period of the greatest taxonomic diversification seen on the planet.

Modern wildlife population pressures have a far more diverse origin.

Even then the modest climate change in the 20th century – both natural and anthropogenic – is overestimated as a pressure on biological populations.

I scanned all of Atomski’s so called references – they don’t say what he claims of them. The paleo references go over old ground – none present more than a passing allusion to a modern day analogue. Without massive tipping points there is none. The modern references are all about extinction rates without causality – or something else entirely in terms of drilling and mining fossil fuels. The one that does mention climate is concerned with nonlinear biological responses. Something he doesn’t understand even if he read it.

“It is well known that current equilibrium-based models fall short as predictive descriptions of natural ecosystems, and particularly of fisheries systems that exhibit nonlinear dynamics.” http://www.pnas.org/content/112/13/E1569.full

Re: “The paleo references go over old ground – none present more than a passing allusion to a modern day analogue”

I’m really not interested in what qualifies as a “passing allusion” to you especially if you think a paper’s title is just a “passing allusion”. And I suggest you don’t act like you’ve read papers, when you actually haven’t read them. Go actually read at least one of the papers I cited:

If you want to have a rational discussion about impacts, there are a few things we need to establish first. I’ll ask you a few questions, one at a time. Please answer them clearly without diverting to other issues. After we’ve reached agreement on these, then we can proceed to discussing the evidence as to whether global warming would be net detrimental or net beneficial.

Q1: Do you accept that, if global warming is net beneficial, then we should not implement policies that reduce or slow global warming?

As I said in a previous comment we will get to discussing the evidence that global warming from 15C to 18C GMST would be beneficial, if and only if you agree to participate in a rational discussion on this topic and answer the few questions I will pose first to ensure we have a common understanding of the relevant background which is necessary before we begin. Your comments indicate you have negligible understanding of this. If you will not participate in a rational debate and are not willing to answer these questions, there is no point in proceeding.

Q1: Do you accept that, if global warming is net beneficial, then we should not implement policies that reduce or slow global warming?

This is of course just another tedious attempt by Lang to insist that his leading and fundamentally flawed question be answered with a yes or no. Else you are – what is his term – intellectually dishonest? I reject the underlying premise of his question. He cant predict change and so can’t know if it is beneficial.

So silly he had to say it twice? All of these impact assessments are based on predictions – Lang’s bent is to claim that warming is beneficial. So he is at least playing along with prediction of warming – and at specific quanta. An unpredictable climate is a beast of a different order.

Troll’s stupid questions deserve appropriate responses. If you actually answered the question I asked and were prepared to conduct a rational discussion (which you have said you believe is “bonkers”), then we could proceed to the next question. You haven’t even answered the first question, so demonstrating it is not possible to conduct a rational discussion with you. The first question is:

Q1: Do you accept that, if global warming is net beneficial (i.e. the positive impacts exceed the negative impacts), then we should not implement policies that reduce or slow global warming?

“Q1: Do you accept that, if global warming is net beneficial, then we should not implement policies that reduce or slow global warming?”
The answer is no, because the word “net” can hide all kinds of evils. Using GDP as the only measure downweights poor countries and is therefore immoral.

Or explain the the climate economists they haven’t a clue what they are doing and you know better they do how to estimate impacts in such a way to make them comparable across impact sectors and across regions.

Utter nonsense. This is just another of your dumb diversion. The question is dead simple. Anyone rational person should be able to answer it. Your diversion could be a relevant question much further down the tree, but not in answer to this first question.

I gave an answer and a reason for it. Yes or no based on just the net sign of GDP is a completely foolish way to decide on a policy. It is too simplistic and ignores a lot of subtleties that proper decisionmaking needs. I could ask you whether sea-level rise is at all beneficial for anyone because that comes with global warming.

Your answer was clearly wrong and your reason demonstrates ignorance. Clearly, if globally the positive impacts exceed the negative impacts, then global warming is beneficial. Only a denier could deny the bleeding obvious.

Complete nonsense. So you want to hold the whole world back from development for some silly ideological belief about equity. I suppose you’d argue we should return to the dark ages because some people would be better off.

No, that’s your argument. If the richer people are better off you wouldn’t do anything to prevent the climate-related disasters for poorer people as long as the net global GDP was positive. Net global GDP is an inhumane measure for a yes/no decision which is the framing of your question.

So, what you are trying to argue is that if the world is better off overall when warmer, but a single person would be worse off, we should prevent still try to prevent global warming, right? Don’t try to divert attention to individual impact sectors or how impacts are measured across all impact sectors. Those issues will be addressed in later questions, if we can ever make any progress. To make progress you have to answer Q1 using simple logic, not by trying to divert from the question and confuse it.

I am saying global warming may have marginal benefit for some but harm for billions especially in less wealthy nations, so we need to restrict it to avoid that harm. Climate change broadens the benefits/damage spectrum but there is a damaging end to that spectrum. Better avoided if we can. You’re saying ignore the inevitable harm and don’t do anything to avoid it because some people benefit. Don’t you see how immoral that is?

Pacific climate shifts have happened at 20 to 30 year intervals over a millennia at least. The sun also rises as someone once said.

JCH thinks it has happened recently. In fact I quoted a passage this morning from one of my favorite scientists saying that – inter alia – that may be the case. Just not as dogmatically, obnoxiously and simplistically as JCH. And without the laughing loon impressions.

Re: “As I said in a previous comment we will get to discussing the evidence that global warming from 15C to 18C GMST would be beneficial, if and only if you agree to participate in a rational discussion on this topic”

I’m discussing the topic you introduced when you wrote this in your original comment:

But in making your claim, you cited a source (Scotese 2016) that admits to anthropogenic global warming, and admits to warming-induced mass extinction. Your source also admits to ocean-acidification-induced extinctions, and compares that to ocean acidification in response to anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2, as I showed:

4. Avoiding/Ignoring the question or “ . . . and let’s not forget about . . .” Anybody who refuses to admit that their argument is weak in an area and, worse still, avoids answering difficult questions in that area is being intellectually dishonest. If they don’t ignore the question, these people are easily recognised from their efforts to change the subject.

And:

8. Destroying a straw man or “You might say that, but how do you explain . . . ?”. Usually a case of shifting the subject and attacking the opponent’s position on that, unrelated or remotely related, topic. This is usually employed in an effort to avoid a question (Sign #4) or when the speaker/writer doesn’t have the knowledge to address the issue.

4. Avoiding/Ignoring the question or “ . . . and let’s not forget about . . .” Anybody who refuses to admit that their argument is weak in an area and, worse still, avoids answering difficult questions in that area is being intellectually dishonest. If they don’t ignore the question, these people are easily recognised from their efforts to change the subject.

And:

8. Destroying a straw man or “You might say that, but how do you explain . . . ?”. Usually a case of shifting the subject and attacking the opponent’s position on that, unrelated or remotely related, topic. This is usually employed in an effort to avoid a question (Sign #4) or when the speaker/writer doesn’t have the knowledge to address the issue.

Re: “Your strawman has already been refuted in previous the subthread.”

You didn’t show a strawman in that post; you simply tried to move the goalposts to another topic, in order to avoid the fact that your own source rebutted what you. I did not strawman you, since you really did cite “Scotese (2016)” and you really did say that:

As Climate Scientists Speak Out, Sexist Attacks Are on the Rise
Kim Cobb states “I do see a shift toward a lack of substance sharing,” Cobb said. “So much of the flak from the climate-denial community, I think, was in the form of trying to share graphs to show their point, trying to question you on the validity of the science. And a lot of that was very misguided, of course, but it was still pretending to be substantive, on the data, on the issues themselves.”

While she certainly doesn’t deserve the type of attacks she and other female scientists endure, I have to take issue with her notion that so-called climate deniers are quaint. Her statement that previous efforts to argue against prevalent climate change claims were misguided and “pretending” to be substantive..this tells me she is, in her own way, just as dismissive of anything that doesn’t agree with her hypothesis. At least she is polite about patting others on the head who argue against her.

It’s not only Dr. Curry. If you look at how the scientific community, let alone mere bloggers and commenters, has behaved towards Susan Crockford, Sally Baliunas and others, you see the same smarmy behavior.

I have no doubt some skeptics have treated scientists like Katherine Hayhoe poorly. But what I remember most is Eli Rabett throwing Tamsin Edwards under the bus for actually keeping an open mind after punks like Rabett had issued her her marching orders.

Alarmists have a very boring view of global warming. They are content to have a single warming rate, for the date range 1970 to 2018. Something like +1.80 degrees Celsius per century.

That is like driving everywhere in your car, at 10 km/h.

Sheldon’s first rule of global warming is,
Rule 1 – You can never have too many warming rates.

All right, this is a slight exaggeration. 343,207 warming rates is too many.

But 343,206 warming rates, is perfect.
==========
Rule 2 – The phrase “temperature anomalies” has too many letters. I am just going to call them temperatures. If you don’t like me doing this, then cut and paste my entire comment into a word processor, and replace all “temperatures” with “temperature anomalies”.
==========
There is an easy way to calculate how many warming rates that there are in a temperature series.

If you have X temperatures in a temperature series, then the number of warming rates is,
(X) * (X – 1) / 2

If you have Y temperatures in a temperature series, then the number of warming rates is,
(Y) * (Y – 1) / 2

If you have Z temperatures in a temperature series, then the number of warming rates is,
(Z) * (Z – 1) / 2

If the number of temperatures in a temperature series is NOT X, Y, or Z, then you are out of luck, there is no way to calculate the number of warming rates.
==========
So, if you have 10 temperatures in a temperature series, then the number of warming rates is (10) * (10 – 1) / 2 = 45
If you have 100 temperatures in a temperature series, then the number of warming rates is (100) * (100 – 1) / 2 = 4,950
If you have 1000 temperatures in a temperature series, then the number of warming rates is (1000) * (1000 – 1) / 2 = 499,500 [see Rule 1 – this is too many warming rates]

Once, I tried to calculate all of the warming rates for the date range from 1880 to 2018, using monthly data.
This is 138 years = 138 * 12 = 1656 months, plus 1 for good luck = 1657 temperatures.
Why plus 1 for good luck? Because I am going from January 1880 to January 2018
So, if you have 1657 temperatures in a temperature series, then the number of warming rates is (1657) * (1657 – 1) / 2 = 1,371,996

This is too many warming rates. My computer blew up, so I can’t tell you what the warming rate was. But I know that it starts with a 7
==========
I frequently calculate all of the warming rates for the date range 1970 to 2018, using monthly data. I have to calculate them frequently, because I keep forgetting what they are.

From 1970 to 2018 is 48 years = 48 * 12 = 576 months, plus 1 for good luck = 577 temperatures
So, if you have 577 temperatures in a temperature series, then the number of warming rates is (577) * (577 – 1) / 2 = 166,176
166,176 warming rates is an acceptable number of warming rates. More would be better, but it is important not to be greedy.

There are only a finite number of warming rates in the universe, and if people are greedy, then there won’t be enough for everybody to have some.
==========
Remember how there are too many warming rates from 1880 to 2018, using monthly data (please pay attention, there are 1,371,996 warming rates. I told you earlier).

I have worked out a way of “cheating”, so that I can get the warming rates for 1880 to 2018. On average, there are approximately 30.5 days in a month. While the computer is not looking, I edit the BIOS, and change the average number of days in a month to be 61.0

Then I run my program, and the computer doesn’t realise that there are too many warming rates for the date range 1880 to 2018.

Alright, I admit that I didn’t quite tell you the truth. What I do, is combine pairs of months, by averaging the 2 months together, to get 1 temperature for every 2 months. This gives me 6 temperatures per year, instead of 12 temperatures per year.

From 1880 to 2018 is 138 years = 138 * 6 = 828 pairs of months, plus 1 for good luck = 829 temperatures
So, if you have 829 temperatures in a temperature series, then the number of warming rates is (829) * (829 – 1) / 2 = 343,206

I told you near the start of this comment, that 343,206 warming rates is the perfect number of warming rates.

Now you know why.
==========
In my next comment, I will tell you how to associate a colour with each warming rate, so that you can make pretty pictures, which have nothing to do with global warming. Nudge nudge, wink, wink, say no more.

“Enter memetic tribes. We define memetic tribes as a group of agents with a memeplex that directly or indirectly seeks to impose its distinct map of reality, along with its moral imperatives, upon other minds. These tribes are the active players in the new culture war. They possess a multiplicity of competing claims, interests, goals, and organizations. While the red and blue tribes were certainly far from monolithic, in the current decade any claim to unity is laughable.”

“Multipolar distributions of power do not obey the logic of bipolarity. Agents do not see allies behind the line and enemies in front of it. Instead the lines surround them and are constantly shifting. Attacks can come from right or left, from state power or mob rule, from twitter pile-ons to SWATting. Thus the conditions of 2018: Strange alliances, rearguard action, unstable positions, and everywhere flux and insecurity.”

Old world, bipolarity. New world multipolarity. The consensus heroes, for instance Cook’s paper, didn’t work. Because they didn’t have enough understanding of what the hell’s going on. If you line up everyone who bought in, we still find their plans didn’t work. They can’t get their nukes like Hansen wants. They can’t get their power lines or dams or pumped hydro storage. They are not united and only pretend to be. But, they can call out deniers eight ways from Sunday but who cares? They’re frustrated with their old world view.

Climate change is racist, sexist, hurts the poor, costs money, it’s a whole parade of leftest causes, it’s even scientific when the climate scientists haven’t been chased off their campus’s by hordes of SJWs who found out they once had a kind word for Bush.

It would be easy if it was black and white. They’d have won by now. But their allies are too uncertain and often are after something else they view as more important.

“Researchers have shown that UV radiation affects climate through direct heating and the production and destruction of ozone in the stratosphere, which then leads to regional effects at Earth’s surface through a complex chain of mechanisms. All these effects, however, are found to have a minor impact on climate in comparison to recent man-made global warming.”

What is meant by ‘recent’ when it comes to man-made? The last half of the 20th century, the last few weeks, months, decades? Don’t we know the Earth has at various times been warmer in the past than it is, recently…

Warmists claim victory even in big snow storms. There never will be falsification of AGW. The descendants of this generation’s goggle of greenhouse goons will just say the glacial material over Gore’s house would have been 1 km higher without CO2.

I think the skeptics ignore the winter storms, but they do notice the floods, fires, heatwaves and hurricanes, because those require some defensiveness on their part when they talk to normal people about climate change.

The global area of land burned each year declined by 24 percent between 1998 and 2015, according to analysis of satellite data by NASA scientists and their colleagues. The largest decline was seen across savannas in Africa, and due to changing livelihoods.
Credit: Joshua Stevens/NASA’s Earth Observatory

So if you had a climate service you would advise local governments not to account for changing extremes. This is much like North Carolina who are by rule not allowed to consider more than 6 inches of sea-level rise in planning. Most other coastal communities would view that as reckless abandon (except maybe Florida).

I read that story. So no more than 6 inches of SLR. An excellent rule. Plan no more than 40 years out then to guess at the time frame. Example: I own marshland on the sea and want to build condos. I don’t want someone telling me I can’t build them because sea levels are going to rise a meter. They’ve taken my land in a manner a speaking.

Contrast with California. They planned for a lot of global warming. And people have to put solar panels on new houses or whatever the deal is. They’ve taken the land in a manner of speaking, just a bit of it.

The paper on “Economic anatomy of optimal climate policy” is based on a presumption that warming is continuing and will be harmful. It is proposing an answer before determining that there is an actual problem. As an economist, I would first ascertain the problem; and I would not assume that reducing emissions would be the optimal policy if there were a problem.

Sounds rather like Brexit. The authorities here see It is a big problem that needs to be managed. It is not considered an opportunity waiting to be maximised. The powers that be don’t seem to like anything that affects the status quo, especially when it might threaten their own position of authority

Tony, I was very pro-Brexit, and am concerned that the May government will blow it, to the detriment of both the UK and the EU. A successful Brexit would surely increase the pressure for change within the moribund EU. Definitely an opportunity rather than a problem, bjut those who benefit from the status quo will (almost) always defend it.

For several people still wanting to see more downsides of future climate, the link on Future Risks of Extreme Heat has this
“For example, at a 4°C warming threshold, the peak temperature associated with the 2007 Atlanta heat wave seen on August 10, 2007 is projected to occur on average 19 times per year, or approximately once every eight days each summer. For New York City, the peak temperature observed on August 2, 2006, expected to occur only once per three years in the baseline period, becomes a temperature expected nearly 20 days per summer for a 4°C warming.”

“Can we use ocean temperatures in the Arctic to predict temperatures in Europe?”
led to my favorite trope, the length of time to put up blogs on observations when they do not agree with your blog purpose and the increasing number of responses when they so. Possibly a paper in this.
The temperature on skeptical blogs seems to go up when the temperature goes down and vice versa for warmist sites.
Sea ice extent , area and volume is another.
I may try a backwards prediction, 2 weekly, on arctic sea ice growth this year. Hint comment in 2 weeks to focus on that small patch off ice off Alaska [if it still exists].
Otherwise this thread will vanish…

This is good news. An inch a decade of SLR is manageable. The oceans are warming at the rate of 0.11 C/century. They are huge.

“Sea level changes due to density variations are termed steric sea level variations. If the entire water column (up to 4000 m depth) were warmed by 1 degree Celsius, sea level would rise by approximately 50 cm.”

I think the oceans are fine place to put all the trapped heat. Taking 0.11 C/century we get 5.5 cm/century of steric SLR. And steric is half of all SLR. They need Greenland and Antarctica.

Ocean water is unresponsive to temperature to changes. This fact is known more than most things. It is one of the most stable things in the whole shooting match. They’ve vacuumed up 92% of the warming. And it hardly matters. They stand as the Kings with their massive reserves.

So Banton believes that IPCC opportunistic ensembles are settled science and Jiminy leaps on the 4 degree bandwagon to discuss Georgia temperatures in 2100?

We have actually done the experiment.

The post war period saw the start of increased CO2 emissions – but also the cool middle century regime, the post 1976 warm regime and a plateau since 1998. Ocean regimes about which there is settled science.

I still have no convincing rationale for why this rate should so dramatically increase this century?

“The paper on “Economic anatomy of optimal climate policy” is based on a presumption that warming is continuing and will be harmful.”

Should it not be demonstrated that there is no risk? The argument that we don’t know and shouldn’t act until we do is an argument from ignorance.

“An argument from ignorance (Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), or appeal to ignorance (‘ignorance’ stands for “lack of evidence to the contrary”), is a fallacy in informal logic. It says something is true because it has not yet been proved false. Or, that something is false if it has not yet been proved true. This is also called a negative proof fallacy. This also includes the (false) assumption there are only two options (true or false). There may be as many as four choices:

1. true
2. false
3. unknown
4. unknowable.”

It appears that a lack of proof to the contrary is seen as proof that warming is not continuing and/or harmful. But in the nature of things there is a low probability but unknowable risk of catastrophe.

Whatever the case – rational policy remains as meeting whatever extreme challenges – far more extreme than anything seen in the 20th century – nature throws at us, meeting food security and biodiversity goals and with inevitable technological innovation across sectors.

Modern approaches to land and soil management are needed for many reasons. This is coming up next month – well worth a listen I imagine.

From the International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate and Society at Columbia University:

July:
The official CPC/IRI outlook calls for neutral conditions through northern summer season, with a 65% chance of El Niño development during fall, rising to 70% for winter 2018-19.

August:
The official CPC/IRI outlook calls for neutral conditions through the rest of northern summer, with a 60% chance of El Niño development during fall, rising to 70% for winter 2018-19.

September:
The official CPC/IRI outlook calls for a 50-55% chance of El Niño development during fall, rising to 65-70% for winter 2018-19.

As it has been shown, El Niño is under solar control. There is a high chance of El Niño developing at the time of the solar minimum. The forecast for the solar minimum is during the first half of 2019, so there is a high chance of El Niño during the second half of 2019.

The probability of this pattern being due to chance is less than 1 in 4000.

“Solar activity during the current sunspot minimum has fallen to levels unknown since the start of the 20th century. The Maunder minimum (about 1650–1700) was a prolonged episode of low solar activity which coincided with more severe winters in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Motivated by recent relatively cold winters in the UK, we investigate the possible connection with solar activity. We identify regionally anomalous cold winters by detrending the Central England temperature (CET) record using reconstructions of the northern hemisphere mean temperature. We show that cold winter excursions from the hemispheric trend occur more commonly in the UK during low solar activity, consistent with the solar influence on the occurrence of persistent blocking events in the eastern Atlantic.” http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024001/meta

Blocking patterns – a more meridional wind field – in both hemispheres spin up ocean gyres and biases the Pacific to more upwelling on the eastern margin. Negative SAM and NAM – alternately known as AO and AAO – increase meridional flows in low solar activity. The Hale Cycle seem a candidate for the 20 to 30 pattern – with periodicities modulated by internal resonance.

Climate models provide the principal means of projecting global warming over the remainder of the twenty-first century but modelled estimates of warming vary by a factor of approximately two even under the same radiative forcing scenarios. Across-model relationships between currently observable attributes of the climate system and the simulated magnitude of future warming have the potential to inform projections. Here we show that robust across-model relationships exist between the global spatial patterns of several fundamental attributes of Earth’s top-of-atmosphere energy budget and the magnitude of projected global warming. When we constrain the model projections with observations, we obtain greater means and narrower ranges of future global warming across the major radiative forcing scenarios, in general. In particular, we find that the observationally informed warming projection for the end of the twenty-first century for the steepest radiative forcing scenario is about 15 per cent warmer (+0.5 degrees Celsius) with a reduction of about a third in the two-standard-deviation spread (−1.2 degrees Celsius) relative to the raw model projections reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Our results suggest that achieving any given global temperature stabilization target will require steeper greenhouse gas emissions reductions than previously calculated.

““When was America great?” she added. “Back when women were in the kitchen and others knew their place, and so because of that, the whole climate change thing, the whole idea that humans could actually interfere with the planet’s climate and that fossil fuels were the way that we got great way back in the day, that’s what underlies all this, and that’s why there is such a mix between gender and climate denial, because it’s all coming from the same perceived threat to identity, and position and power and rights.””

It’s good she’s trolling MAGA. Fossil fuels were partly why we got great. Men deny climate because they don’t have good jobs and their women want to work. Climate denial is something she’s had an opinion on. It’s about men trying to hang onto the past where they had an identity, position, power and man rights. So as the world changes, they lash out against climate change rather than adapt to the world changing. They aren’t that bright. And they doubly lash out against women telling them they are deniers. It’s an easy link to Trump and climate skepticism. So listing it all again: Fossil fuels, Trump, dumb rednecks, climate science, women. In the above, she’s not criticizing climate science. But there is a chance that fossil fuels are good, Trump was somehow correct economically and so too are rednecks. We can view climate science as what a few bad rednecks do when they communicate with her. Using these rednecks as a bell weather to explain it. Like Arctic sea ice. Viewed from a policy perspective, Trump did win and he has the rednecks to thank for that. While she sees wrong things happening to her as described in the article, behind it is a more moderate and substantial point of view, that I think is more correct than the liberal status quo on climate change. Those rednecks stepped out of bounds when attacking Hayhoe.

“…if I were one of the top cancer surgeons in the country, at the same level that I’m a climate scientist and they had cancer, I am sure that most but not all of them would be happy to have me operate on them.”

Complete fail. She may be what she says. But it’s an ineffective argument, fair or not.

““I do see a shift toward a lack of substance sharing,” Cobb said. “So much of the flak from the climate-denial community, I think, was in the form of trying to share graphs to show their point, trying to question you on the validity of the science. And a lot of that was very misguided, of course, but it was still pretending to be substantive, on the data, on the issues themselves.”

If one were to look at the middle, they might see something else. Climate-denial is not the target. It’s the Mann trick of flogging the extreme and not solving the problem. The nation is more polarized. Our goal it work towards the middle. The other side more polarized. Pointing that out without self reflection is what? One could turn what Cobb said around. The left has stopped talking and started calling names. A meeting of the flat earth society. Promoting tribalism.

I got around to Chomsky. He says humanities (or something like that) are in their infancy. In my opinion the same goes for climate science.

I’ll to the best I can. He talks about the liberal elites. Who are supposed to be liberals, but 95% of the time back the establishment and do not challenge it. He says more or less challenge all power. It reminded me of Peterson. The liberal elites support the power hierarchy. It’s true they want to change it, but to their hierarchy. Not the end of it. He gives instances of the liberal intellects continually selling out their ideals to maintain the status quo. The interview is from 2015 so Trump is not dragged through the mud.

Recently what’s his name wrote a book and I think mentioned South Korea and why we are there? A liberal intellectual would ask that question and not use it as proof of Trump’s derangement. How’d all those Middle East wars work out for us? Out intellected by Trump. So much winning.

This paper seems to be seriously flawed.
Their formula for damages (had to change some constants to get them to show up correctly)

D(T,S,G,A) =1/2k(T^2-2xA) + 1/2sS^2 + 1/2gG^2

When Temperature T = T0 and CO2 concentration S = S0 (T0, S0 being the value prior to industrialization) and given that no geoengineering was done at that point the formula becomes;

D(T,S,G,A) = 1/2k(T0^2 – 2xA) + 1/2sS0^2

So to start with 2xA has to equal T0^2 to cancel damages from the initial temperature due to adaptation unless you take the position that the initial temperature was damaging. However, there are still damages in from the concentration of CO2 term. 1/2sS0^2 has to be positive, and therefore even if one assumes that the initial temperatures were offset entirely by adaptation, prior to the industrial revolution we have damages that were incurred due to the concentration of CO2 at that point.

Further the optimum T value is 0. The paper does not indicate which units they are using, but regardless of degrees Celsius, Fahrenheit, Kelvin, etc. I find it hard to believe that there is credible evidence for an optimum temperature value of 0. I thought maybe they were using temperature anomalies, but Figure 1 makes it clear they are not.

Similarly, the optimum concentration of CO2 is also zero. The literature clearly indicates otherwise; a zero CO2 concentration would be pretty much fatal to most living things.

Another problem is with the time rate of change of the temperature, and CO2 concentration. According to their formula, a temperature change that takes place over a long time requires the same cost of adaptation as one that is instantaneous. Concordantly, the CO2 concentration is net damaging for all values except zero regardless of rate of change.

The research confirms a recent study showing that, as carbon dioxide levels rose over the past century due to human emissions, the Gulf Stream has shifted northward and the Labrador Current has weakened. The new paper finds that this causes more of the Gulf Stream’s warm, salty and oxygen-poor water to enter the St. Lawrence Seaway.

“”Crockford (6 September 2018): The polar bears that killed Foxe Basin resident Darryl Kaunak were in good condition, as were the bears who approached the group of hunters after the fact. And the bear that mauled Arviat resident Aaron Gibbons in early July was an adult male in “fair” condition, according to necropsy results.”
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Seems pretty terminal for a polar bear to attack a human

Jocelyn Bell Burnell won the $3-million Breakthrough Prize for discovery of pulsar when she was a student at Cambridge U. She’s now Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford U and former President of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Institute of Physics (which I am a member)

My son is far away at grad school working on his physics PhD. In my support role I’d thought I’d offer up some books I’d read a long time ago:

“The logical statements entered into the notebook are broken down into six categories: (1) statement of the problem, (2) hypotheses as to the cause of the problem, (3) experiments designed to test each hypothesis, (4) predicted results of the experiments, (5) observed results of the experiments and (6) conclusions from the results of the experiments. This is not different from the formal arrangement of many college and high-school lab notebooks but the purpose here is no longer just busywork. The purpose now is precise guidance of thoughts that will fail if they are not accurate.”

I was searching for something that may not exist in the book, and not something to do with climate. It’s a section on carb tuning. So with my Vespa rehabilitation project I assumed the carb was gunked from so little use and maintenance, and out of tune. Varnish moves from gasoline to the carb parts. Carb jets being tiny may gunk This was assumed to cause the lousy throttle response, lousy idling and bogging. Experiments were designed. I predicted cleaning parts of the carb and the correct tuning would improve the problems. The experiments were conducted and those results were realized. Conclusions were formed relating back the beginning of the process, for instance, statement of the problems.

In a number of ways Climate Science has failed to duplicate what many many people do on a daily basis. Confidence and stridency are not warranted.

“But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”

We skeptics are also looking for a control knob. Is it what people think about capitalism? If I want wind turbines in Minnesota to level off in their use, what do I say that will work? It’s not going to be easy.

Going to paraphrase Peter Thiel. When you have a democracy, it’s 51 to 49%. Or 70 to 30%. The majority is probably right. When it’s 100 to 0% or 99 to 1%, that’s when we begin to suspect we are not in a democracy but in North Korea. I bring this up regarding the 97% consensus. And to emulate North Korea. Good job.

When there are no dissenting voices, something is wrong. We’ve either reached utopia, there is nothing further to learn or discussion is no longer allowed. I hadn’t known he claims to be kind of a libertarian.

Okay. It’s not an absolute as you point out. It might make more sense if you hear his context. I think he was talking about the left’s conformity. Not on science but socially. But when you take climate change and are on the left, is one conforming? I think he was trying to say that many times the left conforms on a number of issues. Who can object to the kinds of things Stanford is doing while being a student or even a prof there? So, he questions, is Stanford right on this or that issue? Conforming and/or consensus may then not be an accurate signal or even describe what’s going on. It can contain a component of conforming so the mob doesn’t come to get me. For instance, mobs take out lots people socially. They make one mis-step and they are sanctioned and/or have to grovel for forgiveness. Or take for instance studies that support more men in engineering fields in college. Try to bring up the science on that, and you soon learn to conform. Conformity may then replace the best science. I know I’ve got this all scattered, but consensus – conformity. How are the two related in a situation? Conforming if it exists, can attack consensus, making it mean a lot less then what people think. So people just conform, when they actually think something else. And the conformity police. That’s a whole other story.

People on the right conform too. Look at religion. Look at high society. Look at the attempts at forcing conformation regarding social/religious views, and disrespect for non-conforming minorities. The left conforming with scientific views is relatively benign.

People on the right conform too. So I shouldn’t argue you do it more. Conforming can hide what people really think. And it sets up this inner conflict, like I am a psychologist or something. Can I think of an excess on the right? Gay marriage. People conformed for years. Even my liberal Senator who was otherwise quite the lefty voted for the DOMA. So then what happened? Fast change with only a small minority being vocal now. So I think what people really thought, a material amount of them, was suppressed by having to conform. I think of President Obama’s flat earth society remark. Conform. If you see something, say something. Relating to climate, try not to go off the rails with that one. When many people talk, they’ll start by saying, climate change is real. They are confirming to protect themselves. Sure I you want to think society’s current climate is similar to climate change’s current climate. One may ask, Should it emulate society’s limited tolerance attitudes?

Equating climate deniers to flat earthers was on point for Obama. There is so much evidence that the anthropogenic forcing is pretty much all of it, and the skeptics are just unaware or not good with numbers or concepts like energy conservation that are in basic physics. So if you say leftists are conformers by believing the science while those on the right are more likely to view it as a lefty plot, go for it. See how far that view gets you. Generalizations like that don’t work. Just because you defer to peer reviewed science doesn’t make you a lefty or even a conformer. It just makes you sensible.